One of the reasons (well, mainly the ONLY reason) why I don't play TS1 as much as I wish is because of the sims' fast-decaying needs. It's hard to make them do anything besides trying to keep their needs up for work everyday.

How do you guys do it?

Cheats mostly,

If you go to Simania http://www.simania.nl/sdls/eh/sdls-eh.htm and download the Enhanced Mailbox all you have to do is right click on the mailbox and it will give you options for making friends as well as having money come in instead of going out when you pay bills and refreshing all the motives in the household. Make sure you download the one for your latest EP though. You install it to your root Sims 1 folder on your hard drive and it goes in the Game Data/Objects folder. Around the Sims 1 also has Mood Boosters which will refresh your motives but they are expensive. A full motive boost is 250 simoleons . You can find those herehttp://sims1.aroundthesims3.com/objects/food_15.html You install them the same place as the mailbox. You can have both in game at once

An easy cheat for motives is "move objects on" and then delete your Sim. When you click on his icon, he will reappear with almost full green bars. Make sure that you save first or your Sim may lose skill points if he just earned them. Also, if your Sim is entertaining a friend, hit the pause button first, then delete the Sim and bring him back before unpausing. If you don't, your Sim's friend will leave the lot because it will be "empty".


There are many hacked objects for increasing motives without feeling like everything is getting too easy. Some of my favorite sites for those are below, but you can find others (there's a thread for downloads in this section, too.) And, it is still possible to play the game without cheating, you just have to strike that right balance. It helps if you set up your house efficiently and have a couple of Sims in the household to share chores and to make friends. Certain personality traits make for easier Sims than others and certain jobs are easier than others. Of course, having lots of money allow one the option of taking more days off, so look into ways to make money easily. (Hint: Staying with one type of job at the beginning doesn't usually lead to lots of money.)

Here are some good sites for hacks:

http://mistymage.com/gnohmongoodies/moods.html
http://www.drealm.info/simlogical/s...s/downloads.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/retro/viny.../Temporary.html
http://simsky.parsimonious.org/ensimsky.php

I always played that part as a resource management element in the game. I developed the habit of rotating through household members monitoring their motives and addressing all the ones that were at 50% in ways that advanced the sim. For instance, Pearl Diver's social, fun, and comfort are low, and she needs a logic skill point, so she invites her friend Mack Knife over for a game of chess. The chairs at the chess table are at least Comfort 5, so by the time the chess game is over, her social, comfort, and fun skills are maxed out, she has her logic point, and she and Mack are best friends. If all she wants is comfort, it's time to sit on the couch or recliner and study - probably cooking, as good cooks make more satisfying meals.

I never bought a chair worth less than 3 comfort or a bed worth less than 5/7, as anything less than that the motive bars all but stood still. Energy was the hardest motive to deal with, and I'll cop to having a hacked espresso machine and a couple of hacked showers to deal with that. Especially for Capricorns and Libras - sheesh! But more active sims could get by with a 10 energy bed. Most of my sims had swimming pools so they could build body and fun at the same time, most of them had workbenches so they could make money and build mechanical at the same time (and it hacked me off that the workbench didn't build fun), and every blinking one of them got a hot tub when they got married, so they could invite three friends over and spend time in it building social, comfort, hygiene, and friendships.

Hunger was easy once they had some money - the 10-point fridge, the 10-point stove, and a high cooking skill. In the early, poor days I'd get the best bed, refrigerator, and stove they could manage and the cheapest bookcase, and the first thing they did in the house was start to learn cooking. A friend of mine swore by the microwave for preventing fires and never worked on his cooking skill, but it always seemed to me like his sims were constantly eating. My established sim families only needed to make one meal a day.

And of course, for the room score - the maid. They couldn't die of a low environment score, so I didn't fuss with this one much.

Those are smart gaming strategies, Peni. They remind me a bit of the Prima Guide for The Sims. It was always reminding you to multi-task, such as when using the toilet, choose one that will give you some comfort at the same time. Thank you for sharing.

Yeah, when I think about how I used to do things, compared to how I do them now, I realize how much more Sims1 called for a strategic, rather than a storytelling approach. A lot of the habits I got in Sims1 - like checking their motives before assigning an action to them - are still very useful, but the addition of the wants and aspirations changed it from a strategy to a straight-up storytelling game for me. Now my strategies are geared toward completely different things!

And yet - I still sit them down and get them that first cooking point ASAP.

I played TS1 in the same as way you did....although I did have a painting towards the end of TS1 that I used to add random skills to sims when they first moved in to a neighborhood, since to me the idea that a sim would reach adult hood with no skills at all was mind boggling lol
I use the same strategies for TS2 and TS3, and again I add random skills, even more mind-boggling in those games since the kids start gathering skills in their early childhood but an adult fresh from cas is near retarded.